In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books. Stuck with shorter reads again this week...although not out of laziness but because they were dense reads that were really good on multiple levels.
Permanent reading list:
The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne- I.56- On the length of life.- This sentence…
Therefore my opinion is that we should consider whatever age we have reached as an age reached by few. Since in the normal course of events men never reach that far, it is a sign that we are getting on.
I am a gay black man on the 51 side of 50-years old. I never expected to be this old. I’ve certainly been in my share of dangerous situations; more out of my own doing than anything else, really. I know plenty of similarily situated people that died before me.
And I haven’t even thought about, really, the sudden taking of lives (usually by other black men...(but that’s a whole other story that I won’t get into now); lives that were just as deserving of life as mine was and is.
Sure, M. talks here about Augustus and others shaving years off of their lives and he talks a little losing your mental faculties prior to losing physical capabilities...but this essay specifically and that sentence, generally, sent me off into a more...personal realm.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-The Musgrave Ritual- I’ll get to it next week
I am reading:
In Search of Silence: The Journals of Samuel Delany: Vol 1 1957-1969-
Dancing on the Edge of the World by Ursula LeGuin
An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas
An Army of Ex-Gay Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News by Amy Hoffman
I saw this issue of Philosophy Now at my local newsstand and decided to buy a copy because it contained this essay by an Anya Daly.
I am usually leery of philosophical approaches to a problem like homelessness (having lived through being homeless, myself) but I noted that Ms. Daly had been homeless once before; giving her an experential as well as a philosophical background to say some really useful things on the subject...but I’ll talk about this more in my other column...the Jacques Derrida essay is also interesting for it’s biographical details about Derrida and it’s subject matter, the ancient Greek concept of hospitality.